Reconstructing the organization and agricultural capacity of the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Ugarit: a statistical and spatial modelling approach

Agricultural suitability modeling and spatial analysis reveal that the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Ugarit, located at Ras Shamra on Syria's northern coast, relied on a network of 200 hamlets to sustain its economy. The study quantifies the kingdom’s agricultural capacity for cereals, olives, and vines using suitability maps, while point pattern analysis integrates these findings with archaeological data to identify likely village locations. This approach provides new insights into Ugarit’s hinterland organization, highlighting economic differentiation among settlements and challenging previous estimates of its territorial extent.

Liberati, C., & Bilotti, G. (2026). Reconstructing the organization and agricultural capacity of the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Ugarit: a statistical and spatial modelling approach. Levant, 58(2), 152–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/00758914.2026.2684195